This
chapter will analyse the attitudes of 1920s and 1930s British society towards
inversion as reflected in Rebecca. Analysing theories from key
contemporary sexologists Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis
and Havelock Ellis’ Studies in thePsychology of Sex, as well as
Freud’s psychoanalysis, this chapter will examine Rebecca’ssocio-political
framework. Daphne du Maurier, in her constructions of the narrator, Rebecca and
Mrs Danvers, seems to implicitly critique pathologising studies in sexology
that describe same-sex sexual attraction as a gender inversion of masculine and
feminine. Moreover, she seems to unreservedly undermine established Freudian
theories on identification and desire within the text.

Sexological
works and shaping the parameters of acceptable female sexuality

Studies
in sexology emerged at the end of the nineteenth century where what was
described as sexual deviance was, for the first time, dealt with
scientifically. As well as this, sexology insisted upon the theory of inversion
as cross-gender identification for the subject. Its pathologising analysis was
problematic as it insisted upon heteronormative and patriarchal structures for
its cohesive source of stability. Judith Halberstam in Female Masculinity
argues:

Inversion as a theory of homosexuality
folded gender variance and sexual preference into one economical package and
attempted to explain all deviant behaviour in terms of a firm and almost
intuitive belief in a system of sexual stratification in which the

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stability
of the terms “male” and “female” depended on the stability of the
homosexual-heterosexual binary. (Halberstam 82)

In Psychopathia
Sexualis, Krafft-Ebing argues that homosexuality in women is the result of
a cross-identification, of a “masculine soul, heaving in the female bosom.”
(Krafft-Ebing) His taxonomy of lesbianism relies heavily on an essentialism of
gender in his classification of four types of women inverts, three of whom
identify with a feminine love-object. For Krafft-Ebing, homosexuality in women
implies a personal identification with masculinity and the compulsion to
complete one’s sexual identity by cross-dressing or adopting masculine roles.
As Halberstam notes:

Krafft-Ebing identified four types of
lesbians: women who were available to the attention of masculine inverts but
not masculine themselves, cross-dressers, fully developed inverts who looked
masculine and took a masculine role, and degenerative homosexuals who were
practically male (Halberstam 76).

His
physiological rationale behind cross-identification expresses the belief that
gender and sex are inextricably linked. Although he argues that the form of the
body in inversion corresponds to “the abnormal sexual instinct” (Krafft-Ebing),
he observes that “actual transitions to hermaphrodites never occur, but, on the
contrary, completely differentiated genitals; so that, just as in all
pathological perversions of the sexual life, the cause must be sought in the
brain (androgyny and gynandry).” (Krafft-Ebing)

On
the other hand, Havelock Ellis’ sexological works on inversion in women build
on those of Krafft-Ebing’s nomenclature of ‘congenital inverts’ (Horner and
Zlosnik 15) by arguing that there is a further type of inversion, a contagious
form that can seduce women in realms of society from which men are
traditionally excluded: “for example, that of single-sex

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boarding

schools

or

women’s

clubs”. (Horner

and

Zlosnik

15)

Where

this

noxious

environment could be combated by
physical cleanliness and normal socialisation, however, the congenital invert
is incurable and possesses sexually voracious appetites.

Ellis
insists upon a binary relation between masculinity and femininity in relation
to inversion in his analysis of homosexuality in feminine women, who can be
segregated from masculine women inverts by their motivation to turn to
homosexuality. Ellis denies the existence of a feminine congenital invert;
rather than the true congenital invert, who identifies as masculine, the
feminine invert seeks recognition from the masculine invert as a substitute for
a man. The implication is that she has been rejected by men and thus identifies
with the masculine woman invert as a substitute: “the feminine invert was a
social, rather than a sexual deviant who had been rejected by men and pushed
therefore into the arms of the masculine invert. They were the “odd women,” or
as he puts it, “they are the pick of the women whom the average man would pass
by.” (Halberstam 76)

Freudian
Identifications

Freud’s
psychoanalysis sought to break away from the sexological and physiological
analyses of homosexuality, which he described as offering “not so much as a ray
of a hypothesis”. (Gay 622) Unlike sexology that defines homosexuality in women
as gender inversion, Freud asserts that homosexuality is a result of misplaced
or undeveloped oedipality. Where he argues that identification can be defined
as “the wish to be the other”, (Fuss 11) he defines desire in opposition to
this; “the wish to have the other” (Fuss 11). For Freud, then, “to desire and
to identify with the same person at the same time is, in this model, a
theoretical impossibility.” (Fuss 11) Thus, Freud’s theories argue that
homosexuality in a woman occurs when the subject fails to separate from the
mother in the oedipal crisis and

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consequently
identifies with the wrong gender. Diana Fuss in Identification Papers
argues that Freud uses this theory in order to reiterate the normative
developmental path of heterosexuality:

Freud summons and reworks the concept of
identification to keep firmly in place a normative theory of sexuality based
upon oedipal relations. Identification is also the theoretical lynchpin Freud’s
theory of oedipality requires to keep the homosocial and the homosexual from
collapsing back onto one another (Fuss 12 - 13)

Fuss’
analysis of the Freudian description of homosexuality in women as the ‘pre’
exposes the normative aspect of Freud’s work. In discussing Psychogenesis of
a Case ofHomosexuality in a Woman, she draws attention to the way
in which Freud assumes that thesubject is in a psychosexual state of
pre-oedipal development and transfers her incestuous compulsions to incest to a
series of older, sexually experienced women as substitutes for her mother.
Freud concludes that her homosexuality is attributed to a pre-developmental
state which rejects the existence of homosexuality in women; the female subject
in oedipal development should, in normative cases, ultimately reject her mother
in favour of the father. According to Fuss, “Freud immediately disavows,
however, this homosexual daughter-mother incest by reading it as a displacement
of a preceding heterosexual daughter-father incest.” (Fuss 62) She further
notes:

In the history of psychoanalysis, female
homosexuality is theorized almost exclusively in terms of the “pre”: the
preoedipal, the presymbolic, the prelaw, the premature, even the presexual. The
critical presupposition that female homosexuality occupies the space and time
of an origin – that it is widely assumed to be, in a word,

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pretheoretical
– could account for its long-term neglect in revisionist theoretical work
ordinarily devoted to challenging normative definitions of sexual desire. (Fuss
58)

Identifications
and Sexology in Rebecca

Du
Maurier in Rebecca launches an attack on sexology and psychoanalysis’
assertions about identification and sexuality, but cloaks the attack by
adopting the ideologies and appearing to uphold them in the context of the
novel. She appears to support the assertions of sexology and psychoanalysis but
nonetheless attacks them in the constructions of Rebecca and Mrs Danvers.
Although their relationship supposedly endorses Havelock Ellis’ assertions
about the contagious nature of exclusively female atmospheres it also
undermines them. For instance, Mrs Danvers has unrestricted access to Rebecca’s
bedroom, even though Maxim has attempted to seal it off from the rest of the
house. Nonetheless, Mrs Danvers’ recollections of when Maxim and Rebecca were
together in the sexualised sphere of her bedroom describe in emasculating terms
his inability to satisfy his wife. Thus, in Rebecca, it is not Maxim’s
absence from the female environment that creates a contagious atmosphere of
inversion, but his incapability to perform within sexualised spaces.

Where
Krafft-Ebing and Ellis insist that inversion is always a result improper
morphologies and identifications and Freud insists that inversion in women is
always a case of failed oedipal relations, du Maurier criticises their staunch
resolution that sexuality and gender are governed by strict binaries of desire
and identification, mostly through her depiction of the late Rebecca de Winter,
who is both masculine and feminine.

Du
Maurier’s construction of Rebecca de Winter reflects du Maurier’s compulsion to
revise pre-established beliefs about sexual identification. Rebecca does not
fit into the taxonomy provided by sexology; it would appear that she identifies
neither as masculine nor

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feminine and is
frequently described in both masculine and feminine terms. As such,
Rebecca’s duality upsets the masculine/ feminine, homosexual/ heterosexual
binary that sexology insists upon. The duality of her gender is perhaps best
expressed in Maxim’s description: “She looked like a boy in her sailing kit, a
boy with a face like a Botticelli angel.” (Du Maurier 312) Similarly, Ben’s
description of Rebecca as ‘slim’ (Du Maurier 305) has stereotypically feminine
connotations, but is followed immediately with: “She gave you the feeling of a
snake...” (Du Maurier 305) Apart from referring to Rebecca’s alleged devious
nature, the snake is a visual symbol of the Phallus and thus a reference to
Rebecca’s association with masculine power. In seeming to implicitly critique
Krafft-Ebing’s theory that the association of women and stereotypically
masculine activities insinuates gender inversion, she emphasises Rebecca’s
masculine and feminine characteristics:

The masculine soul,
heaving in the female bosom, finds pleasure in the pursuit of manly sports, and
in manifestations of courage and bravado. There is a strong desire to imitate the
male fashion in dressing the hair and in general attire, under favourable
circumstances even to don male attire and impose in it. (Krafft-Ebing)

Where Rebecca
can wear a white dress, emulate perfectly the virginal femininity of Caroline
de Winter’s portrait and thus give the facade of upholding the ideals of
femininity, she also partakes in what can be seen as masculine activities, such
as sailing unescorted and flogging her horse savagely while riding it. Thus the
double nature of Rebecca’s gender is tied to the dual nature of her sexuality;
where it is implied that she and Mrs Danvers are romantically involved, the
reader is also told throughout the novel of her sexual encounters with men such
as Giles and Favell. Moreover, her sexual agency and seeming sexual aggression
could also

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be viewed as stereotypically masculine
from a Freudian perspective. As such, Rebecca de Winter defies taxonomy by the
limited conclusions of Krafft-Ebing and Ellis’ sexology.

Throughout
the novel, du Maurier brings attention to the multifaceted nature of
identifications, which ultimately gives the impression that they cannot be
classified in such fixed sexological or psychoanalytic terms. Diana Fuss in Identification
Papers addresses the covert and indefinable nature of identifications:

The astonishing capacity of
identifications to reverse and disguise themselves, to multiply and contravene
one another, to disappear and reappear years later renders identity from ever
approximating the status of an ontological given, even as it makes possible the
formation of an illusion of identity as immediate, secure, and
totalizable. (Fuss 2)

In Rebecca,
this is perhaps best expressed in relation to the narrator who blindly upholds
the conventions of patriarchy and heteronormativity in obeying her husband to
the point that she tries to mould herself into the perfect wife for Maxim.
However, in identifying herself with the late Rebecca, her husband’s first
wife, the narrator undertakes a psychosexual transformation, distancing herself
from her father-figure husband and exploring the different realms of sexuality.
For instance, the dream-like scene where Mrs Danvers invites the Second Mrs de
Winter into Rebecca’s bedroom is the most implicit moment of sexual exploration
as a result of her identification with Rebecca:

“You’ve
been touching it, haven’t you? This was the nightdress she was wearing for the
last time, before she died. Would you like to touch it again?’ She took the

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nightdress
from the case and held it before me. ‘Feel it, hold it,’ she said, ‘how soft
and light it is, isn’t it.” (Du Maurier 189)

As the most
overtly sexual scene of the novel, this can be compared with the aftermath of
Maxim’s unromantic proposal: “And I should make violent love to you behind a
palm tree”. (Du Maurier 36) Evidently, this proposition is never followed
through and the narrator never again addresses any sexual encounters with her
husband, ultimately expressing the unsatisfying nature of heterosexuality for
the narrator. Furthermore, Mrs Danvers’ dealing with the narrator in this scene
demonstrates her willingness to transfer her identification with Rebecca onto
her replacement; she treats her as a sexual surrogate for her lost love. For
instance, the narrator notes the drastic change of Mrs Danvers’ attitude to her
within the sexualised sphere of Rebecca’s old bedroom; the usually cold and
foreboding character becomes ‘startlingly familiar’ (du Maurier 189) with the
narrator. Finally du Maurier subverts the Freudian notion that homosexuality in
female relationships is always related to oedipal ‘pre-sexuality’ (Fuss 58) in
representing the homosexual encounter as a natural sexual progression for the
narrator. The narrator has followed what Freud establishes as the normative
developmental path, but her sexuality is now developing in a different
direction.

On
the other hand, du Maurier feels the need to cloak her subversion of
normativity within the novel. Through the monstrous depiction of the
relationship of Mrs Danvers and Rebecca, who, it is implied, were romantically
involved, she echoes Ellis’ attitudes towards relationships between women.
Ellis characterises social spheres from which men are traditionally excluded as
dangerous to patriarchy as, he claims, they propagate homosexuality in women:
“Ultimately, the findings of sexology resulted in women’s friendships and
schoolgirl crushes being seen as dangerous.” (Horner and Zlosnik 16) This is
best expressed in the bedroom scene where Mrs Danvers recollects how she used
to brush Rebecca’s hair:

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“It came down below the waist, when she
was first married. Mr de Winter used to brush it for her then. I’ve come into
this room time and time again and seen him, in his shirt sleeves with two
brushes in his hand. “Harder, Max, harder,” she would say, laughing up at him,
and he would do as she told him. [...] “Here, I shall be late”, he would say,
throwing the brushes to me.” (Du Maurier 190)

This sexually
suggestive scene emphasises how Rebecca would undermine Maxim’s masculinity by
ordering him to perform better in his endeavours to serve her physically, and
as a result, sexually. That he often resigned in his task and threw the brushes
to Mrs Danvers to take over from him further suggests his inability to perform
to Rebecca’s approval, as well as Maxim’s own knowledge that Mrs Danvers could
satisfy her in a way that he could not. Mrs Danvers relates that years later he
had completely stopped brushing Rebecca’s hair and that she herself had
replaced him. Rebecca’s stereotypically masculine sexual power is feminised
with the action of brushing her hair; this ultimately undermines sexological
claims that women inverts seek to identify with masculinity, and thus, a power
that is not usually afforded to them. Later in the novel, Mrs Danvers’
disclosure of Rebecca’s philosophy on sexual relations epitomises these
anxieties:

“She had a right to amuse herself,
hasn’t she? Lovemaking was a game with her, only a game. She told me so. She
did it because it made her laugh. It made her laugh, I tell you. She laughed at
you like she did at the rest. I’ve known her come back and sit upstairs in her
bed and rock with laughter at the lot of you.” (Du Maurier 382)

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She relates the
maniacal laughter of the two women with seeming vengeful relish; their bond
serves as an example of how relationships between women can destabilise the
patriarchal and heteronormative status quo in relation to sexuality. Thus, in a
deconstruction of usual sexological pathologies on inversion, du Maurier creates
a world where female homosexuality does not seek to identify with the masculine
for prestige that is not usually afforded to women; rather, the two seek to
undermine masculine power.

The
narrator constantly refers to Mrs Danvers as androgynous, which undermines the
notion of fixed gender binaries: “There was a strange buzzing at the end of the
line, and then a voice came, low and rather harsh, whether that of a woman or a
man I could not tell”. (Du Maurier 95) The duality of her gender, too, comes
into play later in the novel where her feminine attributes surface; she cries
bitterly over the loss of Rebecca. Thus, in the constructions of the sexually
deviant women in the novel, it appears that Du Maurier adheres to the gender
binary laid out by sexology, yet she constantly complicates these binaries by
attributing another facet that is easily glossed over.

In
the novel, du Maurier subverts the Freudian idea that identification is only
for the same and desire is only for the other in her construction of the
affinity between the narrator and Rebecca and again through the relationship
between Mrs Danvers and Rebecca. Similarly, Janet Harbord in ‘Between
Identification and Desire: Rereading Rebecca” argues that the novel
presents a curious middle ground in which the axes of identification and desire
overlap: “The excesses and contradictions that condition gender and sexuality
surface here where the reader is invited to fantasize the spectacle of
femininity (in this case Rebecca) in an indistinct tension of desire for and
identification with her.” (Harbord 96) Where on one hand, the narrator’s
affinity with Rebecca is fundamentally characterised by a sense of inferiority
and jealousy for the more socially successful version of herself, her desire
for the late Mrs de Winter complicates the binary of identification and desire.
The intermingling of

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identification
and desire within the text is perhaps best demonstrated in the bedroom scene
where the narrator prepares for the fancy dress party and is shocked by her
reflection: “I did not recognize the face that stared at me in the glass. The
eyes were larger surely, the mouth narrower, the skin white and clear? The
curls stood away from the head in a little cloud.” (Du Maurier 237) The
narrator’s description is strikingly similar to previous descriptions of
Rebecca’s physical appearance - on numerous occasions her hair is said to have
taken the formation of a cloud. “I watched this self that was not me at all and
then smiled; a new, slow smile.” (Du Maurier 237) Her smile appears to be
involuntary; where it could be argued from a heteronormative perspective that
the smile is unrepresentative of her identification and desire for Rebecca, but
is rather a physical manifestation of her possession by Rebecca’s threatening
presence in Manderley, on the other hand it is clear that she finds her own
image in the mirror fascinating and arousing: “I paraded up and down in front
of my glass watching my reflection.” (Du Maurier 237) Moreover, the smile
insinuates a dawning self-consciousness very unlike her usual school-girlish
naivety that Maxim so admires. From this perspective, the narrator’s
identification with Rebecca is complicated by its coupling with her desire for
her and she consequently becomes less acquiescent to the role of submissive
wife; she is becoming aware of an identity and sexuality of her own. As such,
where a phobic reading of the text is also facilitated through the monstrous
depictions of female sexuality, it could also be argued that du Maurier argues
against Freud in her assertions that identification and desire cannot always be
defined in opposition to each other.

Demonism,
Identification and The Uncanny in Rebecca

Rebecca’s
demonic presence could be interpreted as the narrator’s guilt at her identification
with and desire for her. In Monte
Carlo, Maxim asserts that he enjoys the

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narrator’s
company “because you are not dressed in black satin, with a string of pearls,
nor are you thirty-six” (du Maurier 41), adding a warning that she should never
wear black satin; that is, she should never be like Rebecca. In identifying
herself with Rebecca and in her endeavour to become her, however, the narrator
defies the father-like Maxim’s orders: “I was following a phantom in my mind,
whose shadowy form had taken shape at last”. (Du Maurier 47) The narrator’s
observance of resurfacing objects that remind her of Rebecca can be read as the
misplaced guilt she feels for disobeying his normative regulations; she,
however does not realise this and wrongly deciphers the unpleasurable feeling
as jealousy of her predecessor. The “R” of Rebecca’s signature is perhaps the
best example of this:

I picked up the book again, and this
time it opened at the title-page and I read the dedication. ‘Max – from Rebecca.
17 May’, written in a curious slanting hand. [...] And then as it bubbled
through the nib, it came a little thick, so that the name Rebecca stood out
black and strong, the tall and sloping R dwarfing the other letters. (Du
Maurier 36)

The narrator fails
to realise that the uncanniness from reading Rebecca’s inscription is not due
to Rebecca’s ghostly presence, which would suggest the uncanny existence of
demonic entities. Rather, the unpleasurable feeling is her guilt from secretly
prying into Maxim’s past and as a result, identifying with and desiring the
late Rebecca.

According
to Freud, the double or the doppelganger is “the product and hiding-place of
castration”; (Freud, Strachey, Cixous & Dennomé 581) a means through which
the subject can identify with the other and protect itself from the threat of
castration. In her construction of doppelgangers in the text, however, du
Maurier depicts the narrator’s identification with Rebecca in a seemingly
heteronormative method; on the surface she is overcome with

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jealousy of the
first wife who surpasses her in terms of beauty, intelligence and social
graces. Her Freudian wish to be Rebecca, rather than to have Rebecca is
manifested in this jealousy. The narrator’s identification with Rebecca is so
strong that at times she is unable to differentiate between her true self and
that of Maxim’s late wife: “Moreover, a person may identify himself with
another and so become unsure of his true self; or he may substitute the other’s
self for his own. The self may thus be duplicated, divided and interchanged.”
(Freud 142) This uncanny reduplication can be interpreted as the unbounded
self-love of primordial narcissism which is, Freud argues, the subject’s
process of adopting the image of the other as the self, while simultaneously
taking that other or self as a love-object. (Freud 142) In this scene, the
narrator takes the image of Rebecca as both self and other, which echoes
strongly the dyadic relation between mother and infant in libidinal
development. Although the relationship has revealed itself to the narrator in
an uncanny method that seems to insist upon Rebecca’s monstrosity, the likening
of Rebecca to the nurturing mother figure of infantile development deconstructs
her depiction as monstrous. Moreover, the double deconstructs heteronormative
identification in Rebecca. Given that the creation of the double, for
Freud, is a psychical method of self-preservation, “an insurance against the
extinction of the self” (Freud 142) the transformation of the narrator into
another Rebecca communicates that transgressive sexuality cannot be abolished
comfortably from society but rather, will always reduplicate itself.

The
novel’s Freudian castration complex in relation to Maxim seems to insist upon
structural patriarchy, but the underlying message serves to destabilise it. In The
Uncanny, Freud outlines the compulsion to ‘guard something like the apple
of one’s eye’ (Freud 139) as a result of the fear of castration. For Maxim, his
greatest anxiety relates to potential severing of the de Winter family lineage.
When Rebecca threatens to break the line of the family by having another man’s
child, Maxim’s preventative measures are completely

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disproportionate
to the threat - he murders her. ‘“If I had a child, Max,” she said, “neither
you, nor anyone in the world, would ever prove that it was not yours. It would
grow up here in Manderley, bearing your name. There would be nothing you could
do. And when you died Manderley would be his. You could not prevent it.” (Du
Maurier 313) The idea that Rebecca could subvert societal structures through
the use of her sexuality is taken a step further in this scene; she ironically
seeks to castrate Maxim through the use of her own body. Given that Manderley
House is burned down in the final chapter – a symbolic castration of Maxim - an
argument could be made that Manderley is the physical embodiment of Maxim’s
ancestral line, which is to say of patriarchy, which he guards with murderous
passion. In Rebecca’s literary counterpart, Jane Eyre, Rochester is castrated
both symbolically andphysically; Thornfield Hall is burned down and he
is blinded and loses his hand in the blaze. From this perspective, it could be
argued that not only is the castle or manor house an embodiment of the Phallus,
it is also inextricably tied to the body of its master. Moreover, that du
Maurier had originally planned the castration of Maxim to be more physically
pronounced emphasises this pairing of house and master. (Du Maurier [2005] 47)

For
Freud, the involuntary compulsion to repeat is the subject’s subconscious
impulse to repetitively act out repressed thoughts through dreams, infantile
mental life and traumatic neurosis. The compulsion to repeat works with the
ego’s reality principle, often in opposition to the Id’s pleasure principle in
its tendency to re-enact cognitively unpleasurable experiences:

In the unconscious mind we can recognize
the dominance of a compulsion to repeat, which proceeds from instinctual
impulses. This compulsion probably depends on the essential nature of the
drives themselves. It is strong enough to override the pleasure principle and
lend a demonic character to certain aspects of mental life. (Freud 145)

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In the opening
chapter of Rebecca the narrator describes a dream where she is forced to
return to a greatly changed Manderley: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley
again.” (Du Maurier 1) That the narrator is forced to relive her experience of
returning multiple times - first through the dream and then through recounting
the dream to a third party - emphasises the role of involuntary repetition and
returning. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud argues that the
original function of dreams is not for wish fulfilment or the satisfaction of
impulses, (Gay 609) but rather to bring repressed wishes into consciousness.
Her vision of Manderley, then, could be interpreted as a psychological trigger
for the narrator; an unconscious resurfacing of the site of her repressed
desire and identification. As such, the renunciation of desire and repression
of instincts has had, for the narrator, a degenerative psychological effect;
she needs to relive her story through therapeutically revisiting the locus of
repression.

In
conclusion, Rebecca presents a world to the reader that appears to
reaffirm binaries of gender essentialism, inversion and heteronormativity, as
conveyed in late nineteenth and early twentieth century sexology. Through her
depictions of the often prudish and normative narrator Du Maurier manages to uphold
these preconceived ideologies. In this same way, she also appears fundamentally
to uphold Freudian ideologies on gender essentialism, oedipality,
identification and desire, as expressed in his Psychogenesis of a Case of
Homosexuality in aWoman. Nevertheless, du Maurier complicates the
world presented in Rebecca in herconstructions of the eponymous
heroine and Mrs Danvers’ homosexual relationship. First, their amalgamation of
masculine and feminine attributes rejects sexology’s assertions of gender essentialism.
On the other hand, the construction of their relationship, along with the
construction of the narrator’s psychosexual transformation, rejects Freud’s
segregation of identification and desire.